


Sole Survivor

by mattsd454



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Fear, Other, Phobia, Tuchanka, thresher maw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 16:20:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6431542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mattsd454/pseuds/mattsd454
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During Grunt's rite of passage, sole survivor Shepard comes face to face with one of the monsters that wiped out his unit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sole Survivor

_Irrational fears and phobias  
Shepard and any of the Normandy crew_

_Special thanks to StevePhillips, who pointed me to the song “Dive Bombers” from the Iron Man 3 soundtrack. The frenzied music inspired me while I wrote this scene._

Shepard activated the keystone. The massive weights slammed down again. The shaman’s voice rumbled through his skin. The audio speakers thundered, “Now all krogan bear the genophage. Our reward. Our curse. It is a fight where the only goal is survival.”

The voice faded away, but the rumbling didn’t. It grew louder. Closer. Cold sweat soaked Shepard’s body. He tried to close his eyes, to center himself just for a moment, but he couldn’t do it. 

_12th Recon Platoon, mission assignment to Akuze. All contact lost with the colonists._

Grunt said, “Feel that? Everything is... shaking.” He grinned like the happiest child on Christmas day. Grunt roared, “I am ready!”

_No bodies. No scorched earth. They all suddenly left at once._

Shepard’s head told him to switch to the missile launcher—get out the damned missile launcher! But the world turned red, and Shepard’s fingers gripped his rifle with claws of steel. His sweat felt like an acid bath inside his armor. He moaned. 

_“What is this, an earthquake?”_

Jack said, “Yo, Shepard, you all right?”

The thresher maw breached the rubble less than fifty meters away. Concrete chunks and old wreckage flew in all directions. Grunt roared, Shepard screamed, and Jack swore a blue streak. 

_Soldiers’ bodies flew in all directions as it erupted from the earth, right under them._

Grunt and Shepard both let go with incendiary rounds as the maw sprayed acid. Shepard dove to his right, more from instinct than will, and kept screaming as he emptied his clip. Through an earthquake of hazed vision, Shepard saw the hinged jaws of the monster as it reared up higher and stared right at him. 

_Schmitter’s scream melted into a gurgle as the acid dissolved his chest._

Jack’s warp struck the maw square in the face. The beast screamed in high pitch and dropped back into the earth in a blink. Grunt actually laughed. 

_Hicks screamed as the maw clamped down on his leg. Corporal Shepard clicked his missile launcher to armor piercing and took the son of a bitch just behind the head. He slapped medigel on the stump of Hicks’ thigh as another maw came up on their right._

Shepard rolled back up to one knee. He spat dust out of his mouth. The Commander felt like Corporal Shepard as he drew the missile launcher. On instinct, he clicked the weapon to armor piercing.

“Where is it?” Jack shouted. 

He watched the rubble peaking over the maw as it ripped through the earth. Earth, sewers, concrete, bodies, wreckage. 

_They ran. For a long time, they ran._

It breached again. 

Shepard screamed again. He fired the missile launcher over and over and over—

A jet of acid seared through his shields and struck Shepard in the chest.

_The acid burned through his armor and seared his body. Shepard kept firing._

Shepard kept firing. 

Jack hit Shepard with a throw that kept him from taking a blast of acid in the face. Shepard gagged. He heard Grunt’s incendiaries fire again, then the maw dropped below the ground.

Rumbling. Shaking ground. It wasn’t done. His armor’s medigel storage showed nearly empty.

_Out of medigel. Out of ammo. Three klicks to the rocks. Corporal Shepard hadn’t slept in days, but some part of him reached down into the abyss of his soul and grabbed his hand. Come on._

The maw headed to his right. Shepard finally found his voice. He shouted, “Maw on the right! Big damn snake, coming up!” His shout overcame the tremble in his voice. Grunt looked at him. Shepard pointed. The battle-bloodied krogan roared and charged out of cover, to the top of a pile of rubble, for a clear shot. Jack hunched her shoulders and dug deep. A maelstrom of dark energy, electrified blue, covered her body. 

_Shepard sprinted for the rocks as the rumbling came up behind him. He screamed into the night._

The rumbling rose up less than twenty meters away. Grunt, Jack and Shepard stood their ground. Despair and rage whirled a demon’s dance inside Shepard’s mind. A half second stretched into an eternity as the maw breached straight up through the concrete. Shepard came face to face with the nightmare. The stench of its cavern mouth and splashing, hissing blood assaulted him. Between the incendiary explosions, Jack’s fury, flying rubble, smoke and blood, Shepard saw nothing more than a blur. The fight lasted forever. 

The one thing Shepard would remember, later, was when the maw’s screech choked off. He had a moment to wonder, then the body slammed into the ground. The blow nearly knocked Shepard off his feet. 

Grunt jumped on top of the maw. Covered in blood, he shouted, “I... AM... KROGAN!!!”

“Ha! Yeah you are, big guy!” Jack cried. 

The dead eye of the maw stared at Shepard from behind a trickle of gray blood. Shepard blinked away tears. He had the shakes. He never had the shakes. 

_Shepard blinked away tears. He thought he saw the maw’s eye as it returned underground. A baleful glance at the pathetic, lucky human who had set foot on its world, saved from its belly by a mountain of stone._

 _Corporal Shepard screamed his war cry, for his lost brothers and sisters, and the blood he left behind on this planet._

Commander Shepard did, too.


End file.
